Horatio Alger: Gender and Success in the Gilded Age: "Ragged Dick" and "Tattered Tom"

The Horatio Alger myth has worked itself deeply into American culture. Even those who have never read one of his stories and many who could not identify him have come to believe that honest, industrious adolescents can easily rise from poverty to respectability. That conviction has reinforced notions of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. It has also strengthened a sense of naïve optimism that in America things will always get better.

The two stories here, one of which violates conve...